Community 2.0 – Meeting your users

1. Lunch 2.0 at Netgear

It seems like just last week when we hosted one of the biggest Lunch 2.0’s ever at LinkedIn (well, it was actually only last week). And, the team’s back at it again… This time around, we had Lunch 2.0 at Netgear. I had an opportunity to meet with a slew of friends, LinkedIn users and the Netgear crew. The Podtech and bub.blicio.us crew were there filming again and it was just a perfect summer BBQ. Here’s a nice post by Jeremiah. (Jeremiah’s site seems to be down, will update it with link shortly)

2. My take on Lunch 2.0 (from a community manager’s perspective)

Now, there could be those of you wondering what are some of the benefits of hosting these events. Here’s my simple three-fold take based on my experience organizing it for LinkedIn:

1. Bringing your users/evangelists together

2. Bringing your own company together

3. Sharing of ideas

This definitely references my recent blog exchange with Hugh Macleod (Gaping Void) on the role of the community manager. My take on Hugh’s Porous Membrane post was that every community manager’s role involves two groups: Community (Users) and the Troops (Your product, engineering, and other teams). As the membrane (Community Manager), which delineates these two groups, its events like Lunch 2.0 that enable you to bring in both groups and facilitate a free flow of information between sides.

As an example, when we had Lunch 2.0 at LinkedIn, one of our co-founders, Allen Blue, outlined some of our recent milestones, our vision and future plans, in a style and format reminiscent of our weekly Wednesday lunches at LinkedIn. That way you take a core attribute of your company, add hundreds of your users to an event and voila! You have one huge community event, with the sole purpose of engendering conversations users and your company. It’s productive and enlightening to see some your users directly interact with your product team, developers and engineers and that’s something any community manager should aspire to do.

I’ve also been asked by the founders of Lunch 2.0 to be an advisor in helping out with some of these events. If you’ve got a tech company in any part of the world interested in bringing together your community and troops over a free lunch, let us know. Lunch 2.0 is already recreating itself in other parts of the US (currently Seattle) and we’re sure it holds potential in any other part of the world with a passion for technology?